A power couple's private turmoil

As a gift scandal slowly ensnared Virginia GOP Gov. Bob McDonnell and first lady Maureen McDonnell last year, it was hard not to dwell on a basic question about the commonwealth’s top political couple:

Text Size

-

+

reset

McDonnell asserts 'wrongfully accused'

More McDonnell indictment statement

Now, a 43-page federal indictment offers an extraordinary version of an answer. Text messages, emails and accounts of in-person conversations dating to 2009 depict a family that publicly appeared savvy about how it asserted the power of the governor’s mansion but privately was wracked by money fears and preoccupied with status symbols.

Maureen McDonnell’s anxieties are laid bare early. According to prosecutors, it was a month before her husband’s 2010 inauguration — a typically showy affair — when she emailed a senior aide to her husband about what she was going to wear.

“I need to talk to you about Inaugural clothing budget,” she wrote in an email, according to prosecutors. “I need answers and Bob is screaming about the thousands I’m charging up in credit card debt. We are broke, have an unconscionable amount in credit card debt already, and this Inaugural is killing us!! I need answers and I need help, and I need to get this done.”

It’s a rare display of the human vulnerabilities present even in the upper echelons of politics, where Bob McDonnell was expected to have a long career until he was beset by accusations that he and his wife improperly accepted gifts from a businessman peddling dietary-supplement products, including one called Anatabloc, to the state for research.

And if the case holds up, the document is a staggering diagram of the temptations to which politicians and their inner circles can succumb.

The indictment portrays the McDonnells largely operating on parallel tracks in their dealings with Williams — with Maureen doing most of the gift-seeking, and Bob helping to raise the company’s profile within state government.

McDonnell has apologized for embarrassing the state over the affair, and the couple has repaid more than $120,000 in loans from Williams in total. The ex-governor has maintained that he didn’t break the law.

“I repeat emphatically that I did nothing illegal for Mr. Williams in exchange for what I believed was his personal generosity and friendship,” McDonnell said in a statement Tuesday. “We did not violate the law, and I will use every available resource and advocate I have for as long as it takes to fight these false allegations, and to prevail against this unjust overreach of the federal government.”

Maureen McDonnell didn’t accept an inuagural gown from the businessman in question, Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams. She took a “rain check” because of the aide’s concerns, the indictment says.

The governor and Williams are said to have had their first discussion about the company’s products in 2010, one of several described in the indictment. McDonnell would go on to arrange an introduction to the state secretary of health, speak at a Star Scientific product dinner and privately discuss his family’s financial struggles with Williams, prosecutors allege.

By April 2011, Maureen McDonnell and Williams were hitting Oscar de la Renta, Louis Vuitton and Bergdorf Goodman in New York on Williams’s dime. At a political event on the night of the spree, Maureen McDonnell made good on her promise to seat Williams next to her husband.